Brewer Street in Soho has always had a slightly electric character — the kind of street where things glow and buzz after dark. On a grey February afternoon in 2021, one particular shop window was doing something genuinely brilliant: a dense arrangement of neon signs, coloured glass bulbs, retro filament lamps and vintage lighting hardware filling the entire window with warm, saturated colour. Against the cold London light outside, it was arresting.
The shop was a pop-up — the kind of installation that exists briefly, attracts a small crowd of people standing on the pavement with their phones out, and then disappears leaving only photographs behind. That’s the appeal of shooting London at street level: the city generates these pockets of visual interest constantly, most of them temporary, most of them unmapped.
The contrast between the warmth in the window and the flat February light outside made for an interesting set of exposures. Shooting through glass is always a negotiation — reflections, glare, the camera’s own reflection appearing where you don’t want it — but the layered effect of the neon signs visible through the glass, with the Soho street reflected back, added something that straightforward product photography wouldn’t have captured.